Proposed (confirmed!) use of Makerspace for AstroPi Autism and Tourettes friendly sessions

#61

I was there on Sunday afternoon and found 10 or so kids sitting quietly, absorbed and concentrating, working happily together with @RichM and the other adults. It was a great scene to see and gave me a real boost :slight_smile:

I think the members who were there benefited as much as the kids did! @joeatkin2 was chatting with them, @SarahJ’s son was exploring his ‘Ewok Village’ with a few of the kids, I was showing them paints, brushes and a bit about painting …

There was no messing, they were all well behaved lovely kids. They made us mini cup cakes too!

Kids engaged positively gives them skills, confidence, raises self esteem and makes them happy which makes us all happier.

I totally support Maker Space continuing this because it’s working well and the kids have now settled well which is particularly important with autism.

Interesting to note that right now UK government are hugely investing in Science, Coding and the Creative Industries for kids … and this is happening Worldwide.

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#62

It was the cupcakes, the yummiest I’ve ever tasted, ohmygosh dreamy.

#63

I’m very happy for us to support this too. How do kids get involved? Is it aimed at complete beginners? I think William would love to join a session, he’s only 6 but loves the computing & coding they have done so far at school.

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#64

Well this would be a sort of round-up session for the AstroPi competition. But we will see if members are happy for us to host regular RasPi for youngsters events.

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#65

Grace and I were talking about doing a couple of the RaspJam events (much like the Arduino events) in the space. We could do a split session, kids in the morning, adults in the afternoon? Zero to hero sort of stuff ?

Courty

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#66

Zero to Hero, that’s the best #tag ever! Love it :smiley:

ZerotoHero

Zero to Hero

zero to hero

zerotohero

Annoyingly putting a # in front of the tags above makes them huge and tag less! But you get the gist.

Totally support kids in the morning and adults in the afternoon, good idea, a culmination of the posts above, it makes sense.

I met Grace on Sunday, she’s fab.

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#67

Perhaps better to split along ability lines rather than age…

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#68

If you type a backslash / before the # it works #zerotohero

Courty

#69

I could probably wrangle a show and tell with the Pi and lights of Tekton one three

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#70

Sunday is the wrap up session – the submission deadline is early next week.

Grace has asked about 3d printing a case for Sunday. I believe this is no small matter @RichM?

#71

About 10 to 15 hours of printing. I have one, but don’t have the hardware to fit to it.

#72

Did you make it for this? And what hardware does it need?

#73

I printed it for Sammy, but I could always do her another one.

It needs various nuts, bolts and mechanical fixings. Some push buttons and Dupont cables to connect them, and some kind of expansion header to make up for a missing circuit board. Farnell do a complete kit of bits that seems much easier than scrabbling around for all the individual components.

http://cpc.farnell.com/ucreate/uc-apk-comp1/astro-pi-component-kit-budget/dp/SC14158?DM_PersistentCookieCreated=true

#74

Do we have another session coming up soon?

#75

Third Sunday in May.

I’ll get it in the calendar if it’s not already there.

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